


Light/Dark

by Dorasolo



Category: The X-Files
Genre: Angst, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-02
Updated: 2018-01-02
Packaged: 2018-01-07 22:49:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 873
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1125315
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dorasolo/pseuds/Dorasolo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>So afraid of watching him crash, wax and wings melting in the heat, she had failed to notice that he never intended to leave her behind. Post-IWTB.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Light/Dark

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted to LJ on 8/7/2008 after IWTB.

She no longer looks for signs strewn about the unremarkable house that is her house, her life. The imposing and intimidating gate has thankfully been put to pasture; she is happy because it makes coming home easier when she doesn't have to push past the wrought iron and rust monstrosity that squeaks in decibles that call to mind banshees, regardless of weather and lubricant hastily applied to the hinges. The gate was as much to keep _them_ out as it was to keep _him_ in. It is far beyond the time that Fox Mulder be set free to reclaim his twisted and oft inimitable path upon the earth.

For six years Dana Scully feared his boredom, his insatiable curiosity, and his unrelenting pursuit of everything and nothing all at once. But above all she feared that he would pick all that above her, once the novelty of how many freckles dotted the upper right quadrant of her back wore thin and finally failed to capture his attention. It was this fear, she now knows, that caused her to both want to believe Father Joe Crissman's directive not to give up (on him? on Christian? on medicine?) and to run screaming out into the night and curse God and the heavens from stealing her hard earned normalcy. _Their_ hard earned normalcy.

Three years ago, she caught him on the internet (his one necessity, though he muses sadly that it's a much emptier place without Byers, Langly and Frohike, even after all these years), poking around his usual sites, his usual listservs about MUFON and cow mutilation and latent vampirism found in a random assortment of people just outside of Cleveland, Georgia, and she had worried with a dishwater gray and opaque fear then that the pull of his quest, his magnetic calling, would be too strong and he would leave this life of newspaper clippings and hiding in the back room, lazy Saturday baseball games and her in his lap reading medical journals.

She has her own equation, her own constants, when speaking of Fox Mulder. For example, she knows that the number of pencils thrown at the ceiling and the number of littered newspaper discards increases in a line equivalent to his boredom, an asymptotic line skirting the breaking point, though she worries that one day it'll touch zero and it will be the end.

Scully is disgusted and ashamed to admit that she has learned to trust no one, not even her own heart and not even her own faith, when faced with her fears about competing against Mulder's quest. And so, three weeks ago, she gave Mulder an ill-thought-out, hasty, half-hearted ultimatum: if he didn't give up, didn't pack it in, she would no longer come home to him and his dark, dusty path, assuming she would lose.

When she had delivered this blow, Scully remained stoic; stilted and resolute as always, matter-of-fact, offering no explanation, no thought process beyond the barest of glimpses into her mind. And _then_ ,the darkness of the case had snared her in it's bloody hooks, the unanswered questions calling out to the ignored crevasses of her mind even as she tried desperately to focus on her own job, her own concerns, her life sans the X-Files.

She realizes now that walking away is impossible because though she tried to bury the darkness, it remains visible just under the surface, festering with intrigue and mystery and excitement. Nine years of pursuing the depths of darkness -- the abductions and deaths and conspiracies -- left a dark stain, too dark to conceal underneath the facade of regular Dr. Scully. The truth, the mysterious, uncatchable truth, beckons to her in different ways every day, whether it be a risky medical procedure or a stolen peek at Mulder's new cases as a consultant. She is, and has always been, too curious, her own quest for answering questions and riddles with logic almost insatiable. Presented with illogical information, she salivates to right the wrong, hungry for rationality in the irrational. It is her stubbornness, equal and opposite to Mulder's, that pulls her down the rabbit hole against her more sensible desires.

Mulder had once told her that she had saved him and that he didn't -- couldn't -- do it alone. He would have found a way to fly only to crash and burn in the sun. So afraid of watching him crash, wax and wings melting in the heat, she had failed to notice that he never intended to leave her behind. She and she alone could call him back to earth. Prior to this case, she had a plethora of new things to love about Mulder, from his boredom-buster beards to his starry eyed insistence that she leave her hair down for bed. But she had forgotten the old Mulder, the things that made him so aggravating, the terrible love that makes her both thank God and curse him as she watches Mulder refuse to bend to standards and rules that constrain his manic brilliance.

He would follow her anywhere, and she can never leave, not really, because the mark Mulder left on her is buried deeper than the darkness, touching her heart and shining through the scars, lighting her from within.


End file.
